Health reform would swell Medicaid rolls, Florida says

Federal health-care overhaul proposals in Congress could add between 1.4 million and 1.69 million people to the state's Medicaid rolls and cost state taxpayers more than $600 million annually by 2015, state officials said in a report released Tuesday.

The health-care proposals in the U.S. Senate and House would expand eligibility for Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health care for poor and disabled, but it comes with a cost.

Under the Senate plan, Florida's Medicaid rolls would grow from about 2.7 million to 4 million people by 2015, according to a report by the state Agency for Health Care Administration. The total cost would be $4.2 billion -- with the state picking up $608 million of that, the report said. The federal government would pay for the rest.

Florida's costs for the Medicaid expansion would rise even more after that under the Senate plan -- to $819 million by 2019, the report calculates.